Photo credits: Sebastian Ganso Edited by Vaishali Title: Free Me (Free Me #1) Author: Grahame Claire Publisher: Self Published. Year of Publication: 2020. ISBN: 978-1-951878-02-3 Format: E-book - kindle app Genre/Themes: Contemporary Romance, Adult Fiction, Healing/Trauma R E V I E W... ‘But then Daniel’s words came to me again, even though I had no idea that they were the words I’d needed to hear. The power is in your hands now. The freedom to choose what happens to you, to your body. That freedom is yours. And then I felt it. Liberty. My choice to be with him could be mine. This man could be mine.’ ‘Andrew held my gaze. In it, there was comfort, patience, and care. Everything I needed to chase my fears back to the dark.’ Trish started her whole life over with a remarkable leap of faith, a food truck that has the New York crowd always in line for repeat business and an eleven month old that gave her a lifeline. From the start of this story It’s plain that Trish is clearly in the process of healing from the type of trauma that possibly won’t ever be washed away. But the past is not the point of this story because Trish is too fruitful, too heartening to look longer at her pain more than she ever would the skyline. You can feel everything that was taken from her, everything unvoiced that speaks for itself, the dark veins that bleed between the lines of all she makes bright. The torment didn’t stop when the horror did. That’s what trauma is and her devastating history is what led her to Paths of Purpose: a safe haven for women to rebuild their lives and re-establish themselves. It’s a refuge and a harbour, a mooring that has become her home and given her the space to meet the type of friends you can only make when you understand the intimacies of misplacement and deprivation. What might seem like small steps are major, meaningful shifts in Trish’s life. It’s not an abstract labour to see or feel that. Inserting herself back into the bigger, open-wide world is a fear-inflamed practice, and though Trish is overwhelmed by the pace, she’ll never jilt this life for the second opportunity she knows it is. It’s hard but it’s a future that once died in the shadows of incarceration. She now has a present bundled with the intensity of fear and freedom both. Trish won’t ever forget what brought her into the free world, but having physical liberty isn’t the same as discovering true freedom. When Andrew Dixon saves a clearly distressed Trish from the wrath of a grumpy police officer, he eagerly comes back, and not just for the delicious edibles that are in high demand, but for the woman across the counter who leaves him feeling unrested every time he’s apart. He restores natural but remote feelings Trish thought had bled out of her when all her choices did. He’s patient, attentive, charming and everything she never knew a man could be, give her everything she never knew a man could give. But he’s not without his own spent perception of relationships. That’s where the Dixon family comes in. Whether he’s ready to stomach her monstrous history is the question that tests. Free Me was unexpectedly deep and persevering. While reading this, there was a quote on repeat in my mind courtesy of Karen Marie Moning’s Faefever. It was a sentiment that referenced Kahlil Gibran’s ‘the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.’ You can’t read this and not draw parallels to leading lady Trish who’s just a pure and moving replica of light. One that I hope sinks into the minerals of that joy one day. Trish's story is hard to swallow. Her history is utterly heartbreaking. Even harder to stomach and I was gut-pummeled by the horror of it. She doesn’t let you wallow for too long though. She’s such a survivor, a fighter, a trooper in every way a woman can be. It’s precisely why freedom has a poignant meaning in Free Me. I admire the authors for handling this story with such care. If Trish didn’t have her faction of free-handed and generous friends to lean back on, to be the first to reach her side in duress, if she didn’t have the supportive women at Paths of Purpose to help brace, reinforce and prop her up, this book wouldn’t have the force it does. Everything Trish has now is the inverse to what she’s never had before this phase of her life. These people are everything she needs. Help can do so much in making someone feel whole and human. Her present life is a unmediated ultimatum to every day she has left behind in the dark. I have so much faith in characters; the ultimate role they play in collectively carrying the heart of a story as well as they carry the hearts of each other. Every supporting member has a bearing in Free Me and has a place in the story. Without the curmudgeony, complaint-prone Mr. Hardaway, the nurturing Mrs. Quinn, the reconnecting family of Dixons whose love settles between their differences, I doubt this book would have quite the same humane and hospitable calibre. Each character is well-expressed; as real people with authentic lives and internal brawls - even if we can’t see what they’ve got to reveal just yet. Plenty of breadcrumbs for the singletons to see you into the following books in the Free Me series. The atmosphere is sober as much as it hums with a lasting spirit. Most of Trish’s friends already have established relationships with respective partners. After realising I was on the sidelines, I jumped the net with a light online search and came across the Paths of Purpose series which predates this one (the Free Me series) and that’s where Sonya, Drew, Muriella, Storm, Daniel, Vivian and the rest of the crew each have their books for their romances to unravel. In their books, I believe Trish is a side character, but here she has her opportunity to unsparingly reveal who she is behind the kindhearted surface - more kindness and a history that hurts. Whether Paths of Purpose was once each of the previous protagonist's home ground, I’m not sure, but I was completely drawn in by Paths of Purpose and their female-directed muscle. Whether it’s loosely modeled on a real life humanitarian endeavour or completely fictional, I was humbled by what they do by way of the many ladies (who live within and support the effort) did for Trish. What Mrs. Quinn does for all of them. These women have suffered but always boost each other at every opportunity. I found myself being grateful for the real-life asylums that echo the effort. But let’s talk about Trish a bit more. She’s intimate with the degrees debauchery can reach. She’s intimate with the worst a woman can be made to feel. A wealth of violence and violation charges her history, and yet, she’s a flowing fountain of hope who still has infinite space in her heart to give and be a stellar-hearted friend, to be a generous person to everyone who matters. She’d lost so much, can mourn over everything, has every reason under the sun to shelter the best of her heart and yet she chooses every reason not to. What i love about Trish is even though her past is as unfading as a painful haunting, she’s involved in the sunrise ahead. Her glow is timeless. She’s such a light. Free Me isn’t the dreamy, upbeat romance that scorches with spades of steam and froths with laughter. It’s the type of hard-won love story that burns at a pace and rings upliftingly. It’s sober, tentative, deep and resilient but with a comforting measure of humour and uplift. No reader can read this and claim it isn’t a story without heart or importance. There is horror, but the unselfishness and ungrudging kindness that testifies to the wide and wonderful human spirit. This book has a heartfelt center with generous bones and gut that swarms with pain. Trish has been whittled by the din of a horrifying history. Free Me is the offset of a love story as much as it is a rebirth of a survivor. The exercise of living like you’ve never been lost and loving like you’ve never been hurt is pulled flush to a revised stretch entirely. Trish deserves your unabridged attention for what’s to come. Each minute is a lunge. Every day is an upswing. What seem like mini-milestones cart the abundance of the big climbs - every one is infused with a badly impressioned history and a future’s pledge. Love isn’t the charted landmark made only for the unscarred. Even the most haunted and touched by grit can find their way to the light. Only for Trish, she is the light. You’ll get a protagonist who won’t let the worst darken her doorstep but finds that she has to face the fear of living openly and seeing how love fits and feels much sooner than she thought. Brilliant supporting characters, prickly familial relationships and sibling ties can also be found in this one. I’m surprised by this writing partnership and I’ve duly noted this Grahame Claire jaunt. I feel the same about this book as Trish does about her life: so painful but so worth it. So much more than just a romance, it’s a sterling feature of faith and second-chance life. Family doesn’t need to be silhouetted by blood. Blood bonds are given, these are made. A truly, truly meaningful story with twinkling heartstrings. I gave this book 4 stars -C O N T E N T W A R N I N G: Mentions cancer. Gives reference to multiple counts of past rape, sexual assault, forced sexual intimacy, incarceration and physical abuse. Episodes of PTSD. Some swearing. Mentions drugs. Violence and blood. One sex scene. All in all, you’ll find adult content and sensitive themes that aren’t suitable for younger readers. --------------------------------------- M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read --------------------------------------- S O M E T H O U G H T S : 1) Even at the end of the book, Trish and Andrew are still very much in the early phases of a relationship, still getting to know each other even though they found love. I found that I wanted more bonding between them, more adventures, to see the ways in which Andrew could show her how amazing life can be. Even when we’re told that they move in together we get his quote: “Andrew had helped us adjust to life outside of the shelter, to life out in the world.” - I was happy to hear this but would have liked to see how this happened. Because Trish had fallen to such a tragic rock bottom, I’d thought she’d get the opportunity to reach some especially joyous highs for us to see, the highs of a new life, to laugh uncontrollably and to feel joy in exact quantity to despair. I think it would have given real full-circle meaning to bring her story to a close, even thought it’s just the beginning for her. 2) I did like Andrew as a supporting protagonist but I didn’t find him to be as interesting a character. I was also a bit let down in him for the break up scene because I couldn’t understand why, after all the patience he showed with Trish, did it take someone exposing her past, for him to come to his senses. I think I just wanted him to be everything Trish needed, especially during the hard times. As well as that, I think the split wasted the time they could have spent building up their already precarious an snowflake-thin relationship. I just wanted to see more day to day things with them, even just talking about silly nothings. 3) When Trish’s ex tells her he’ll make one of the clients pay for helping her escape, I’ve got to say that I was surprised at her reaction. I can’t imagine she’d want to warn a man who had used and violated her as much as the others that Huxley might be after him. That was difficult to swallow and felt odd to hear, but I suppose that’s Trish’s choice to make not mine. 4) There are some loose ends that might make for substandard closure, things that we don’t really get answers for; this includes the part of the antagonists’ roles and the others who are also implicit in whatever part they played. It’s left more unclear than I’d like. I also would have liked to get a fix for the timeline and backstory because as I was trying to calculate the background info (which is sparse) it didn’t always add up. I love interacting with fellow readers, reviewers, bloggers and writers! 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